Visiting the IRS office at the US Embassy (and the joy of missing tax docs!)

Hello,

I recently filed US taxes with the help of an accountant and made my payment online. My partner then mailed off the return to the IRS office in America, but it seems to have disappeared in the mail at some point after arriving in North Carolina. At the moment, we have no idea if the IRS has indeed received it and due to their recent security breach, we can't check online. Good times! 

My plan is to visit the IRS office at the US Embassy and see if they can find out whether the return arrived. I have to go in person as they no longer phone assistance ( . Does anyone know if they will indeed be able to check? Has anyone visited the office before? If I show up at 9am when it opens, am I likely to discover a long line?

Any advice would be much appreciated! Thank you!

The IRS closed all offices outside of the United States earlier this year for reasons of budget cuts.

Proof of postage is all that you required to keep, but you could request an IRS transcript by filing Form 4506-T if you want certainty it has been processed. This will be a lot cheaper than flying to visit an IRS office in person.

You'll have to inquire via snail mail as Guya suggests as you may not be able to request a transcript online since the security breach of the IRS system.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Statement-on-the-Get-Transcript-Application

Thank you for the advice! I was going to visit the London office (which is open until autumn, when it closes) and I live in London, so it's not the most difficult thing ever. If I do go down there, do you know if they will actually be able to check and see if the forms arrived, or will they just tell me to check for myself through the mail?

Thank you again! 

Have you tried the "Where's my refund" tool on the IRS website? http://www.irs.gov/Refunds , if you don't expect a refund enter $1 in the refund amount. It should give you some generic status update like "your tax return is being processed" but this is enough to know it arrived.

I did manage to get through to their International Taxpayer Service Call Center in Philadelphia about a year ago. I waited apr. 20 min but they did confirm that my return arrived and was accepted. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Contact-My-Local-Office-Internationally

Thank you so much for that tip! Most helpful!   

I tried it, by the way, and it works! But it doesn't say specifically if that was my 2014 that was received (I filed for a couple of years, you see). Do you know if the site would be referring to the return from the last year?

I believe it refers to the most recent year so 2014. If you sent all the tax returns together with 2014 then you can expect that they received them all. It's very generic, if you want specifics and certainty give them a call. Make sure you have a cheap way of calling the US from abroad as you may have to wait a long time. Skype, google offer very cheap VOIP at about $0.01/min.